Twitter Employee Live-Tweets Birth of Daughter

Claire Diaz-Ortiz welcomed a daughter, Lucia, to the world on Saturday. We know this because the Twitter employee used the social network to live-tweet her birth.

If you work with social media, you understand the difficulty of live-tweeting an event. The process involves a person giving a running account of events in real time on Twitter. Usually, a bit of editorializing is added to the online play-by-play. Most of the time, live-tweeting happens during big television events, such as professional sports and award shows.

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But there was no red carpet commentary or real-time account of a basketball game on Diaz-Ortiz's timeline on Saturday. Rather there was a tweet at 4:31 a.m. that questioned whether her water had just broke, tagged with "#labor."

That hashtag soon changed to "#inlabor." Diaz-Ortiz, wearing a Twitter jacket with her "@claire" handle embroidered on the back, was off to the hospital with her husband. Naturally, the ride was far from smooth.

"Speed bumps on road and contractions don't mix. #inlabor," she tweeted. That was followed by, "Car overheating?! Stopping at gas station. #inlabor"

She pulled over at one more gas station before the car broke down on the side of the road. Diaz-Ortiz eventually found a taxi and made it to the hospital, where she noted that because she was in labor weeks earlier, she forgot "essentials," such as US Weekly magazines and chocolates.

Amazingly, Diaz-Ortiz was also checking mentions and replies through all this.

"Please stop asking what we are planning to name the baby," she tweeted. "We don't know. And it's getting awkward. #inlabor"

There were complaints about the hospital Wi-Fi ("sucks"), notes on how people were reacting ("some will hate"), and descriptions of her labor pains ("BLERGH!!!!!"). At 5:33 p.m., there was a sign off, because Diaz-Ortiz became a mother to a baby girl.

But before that, there was an update from "@lucia" at 4:50 p.m. A picture of the baby cradled in her mother's arms came with the caption, "i think i liked it better on the other side. #born."

Perhaps Diaz-Ortiz, who is Twitter's director of social innovation, has now sparked a trend. Certainly the accusation that a parent is oversharing information online about his or her child is nothing new. But Diaz-Ortiz wrote "Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time." She is credited with getting the pope to use the social network, and she clearly believes the site can yield constructive dialogue. Do you believe this was a good use of Twitter, or is it another case of parents oversharing moments in the life of their family?